AS237: James Lindsay and Eli Bosnick on Social Justice

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 237, and I am your host, Thomas Smith. All right, well, here it is. Here it is, we've done it. It's... you likely already know by now. This is what I've been trying to get to have happen on this show for a while. I've complained a lot about people like Dave Rubin. I know I won't repeat it, but I've complained about the echo chamber there. Regressive left, regressive left. Left, regressive left. As long as we make fun of trigger warnings, then we're all on the same side. And then the same thing goes for the other side. There are some shows where where all they do is to strawman the other side and talk about how they're racist or transphobic bigoted in many different ways that I I don't think are quite accurate, so I've criticized both sides, and I've long since said there ought to be something better, there ought to be a better way to actually have a conversation.

0:01:26 Thomas: And for the longest time, I'll admit, I wasn't really able to do it. I try to provide counterexamples and questions whenever I can, whenever I'd have Eli on or someone from the other side, I'd do my best, but I am kind of in the middle. I don't really consider myself far on either side of this, so I've much preferred if I could somehow get two competent players on each side, two competent proponents of whatever the... I know people won't exactly agree what the sides are if they're on the sides, but but whatever, people who are on two sides of this issue, to have a real discussion on it, an actual discussion that isn't just name-calling and strawmanning, but that's actual argument. I thought it's been darn near impossible to get to have happen, but fortunately, we are very lucky that we've got the right two people to have it, and I think it's finally happened.

0:02:18 Thomas: A little note before we get going, this was a monumentally huge recording. This was four hours, I think. By the time it was all edited down, it was something like it's 230 minutes, I want to say. It's huge. I understand this is not everyone's issue. So even though this could easily be something like four and a half parts, really, if I use the normal length of my show, I don't want to just do these issues for that long. I know some people will be turned off by that. At the same time, I feel like this is an incredibly important conversation and one that I've been trying to get, and a lot of people have wanted to have happen for a long time, so I don't want to shortchange the discussion.

0:03:03 Thomas: As a result, patrons hopefully are not even listening to this. Patrons are hopefully over on patreon.com/atheist where you can find the entire debate right now and you can listen to the whole show, one file already done. So go find that now. But for everyone else, I'm going to divide it into, I think, three very long parts that are longer than my normal episode. So I'm trying to pack it down as much as I can to not have it dominate the show. But at the same time, this is maybe the most significant conversation I think I've ever had hosted on this show, because it really is, the two sides are so contentious, and they just do not get along, they don't dialogue, and this is my attempt at that.

0:03:49 Thomas: So without further ado, let's get to my amazing two guests. With me right now are two guests that probably need no introduction because they've both been on the show before. We've got Eli Bosnick. How you doing, Eli?

0:04:01 Guest: Oh, thanks for having me back, Thomas.

0:04:03 Thomas: Thank you. Of course, GAM, Scathing Atheist, full time on Scatting Atheists now, right?

0:04:09 Guest: Yes, punishment for some, benefit for others. My Twitter is a mix of love and hate right now.

0:04:16 Thomas: That's awesome, though. That's a big deal. And then, of course, you also guest on Skeptocrat. Are you regular on that yet now?

0:04:22 Guest: Yes. No, I, uh, I guessed on Skeptocrat.

0:04:25 Thomas: All right. Right. Well, I'm sure everyone's familiar with Eli. And of course, I've also had my other guest, James Lindsay, on the show a couple times before. How are you doing, James?

0:04:34 Guest: I'm good, thank you for having again. It's always a pleasure.

0:04:36 Thomas: Oh, I am very, very grateful that you are coming on because I just have had a hard time trying to set this up before. Eli has long wanted to have a conversation with somebody. And it's harder than you would think to get it going. And we don't have to talk about that now, but that is one concern I have in this. And I just want to say thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it. And, I've pegged you from our previous conversations as being someone who is fully willing and able to defend their point of view, and I really like that about you. And I can't wait to hear this discussion. So, the topic, this is not a formal debate or anything. We're not doing any rules or, I mean, questions at the end where people do long rants instead the most awkward time of debates.

0:05:25 Thomas: But I will try to moderate the time a little bit just to make sure that one Eli is not just going on forever.

0:05:33 Guest: Yeah, that's for your sake, James.

0:05:36 Thomas: I do have a taser button on Eli that we installed so that I can get him to stop talking.

0:05:41 Guest: After the first time I appeared on the show. I mean, this is gonna be like that experiment, then. Uh, are you gonna give me access to this and see if, like, I follow orders, and, This is how often you push the button.

0:05:47 Thomas: Oh, yeah. Was it the Stanford one or whatever? Yeah.

0:05:54 Guest: Yeah, James, you're just putting the button down. I am aware I'm sitting on it actually I put it on my chair whoops great

0:05:58 Thomas: Uh, yeah, he's like, whoops, I set my coffee on the button. Oh, whoaps. So, uh, yeah. We're going to go ahead and let Eli start off because it, it, it is, I don't know if it's not exactly burden of proof or anything, but Eli has had some criticism of people who have been outspoken and, uh, against trigger warnings, safe spaces and all that. So we're going give Eli the chance to set it up and then I will step back can do very little except to try to make sure you guys stay even on time. And if we need to, I'll ask a clarifying question if something's not clear. But with that said, thank you again. And Eli, why don't you go ahead and take it away?

0:06:38 Guest: Uh, thank you so much, Thomas. So actually I wanted to jump on what Thomas said before we start, um, because not only am I incredibly grateful for James being able to have this conversation and being willing to have this discussion again, I've been trying to have it for almost two years now, but I, I sort of want to say something because I have a relatively large, large listenership, which is that after I was on Dogma Debate with David Smalley, he got a lot of negative feedback based on our conversation. And not from him. I tried to make it incredibly clear how grateful I was for him speaking with me, but there were a lot people who were on, quote, unquote, my side who thought it would be good to tweet mean things at him or send him mean emails or whatever it is. And I want to say, before this starts, it took a tremendous amount of courage for James to get on with someone on my side of this issue and talk about these things.

0:07:30 Guest: My side of the issue, and look, I'm obviously representing it. My side of the issues is filled with false accusations and hysteria and a lot, a lot of mean-spiritedness. So what I want to say is if you consider yourself to be on my site of this issue, again, me and James are going to disagree on a lot. I'm a safe space, I was a safe-space coordinator the entire time I worked at colleges. You know, I'm pro trans rights. I have worked with and continue to work with RAINN, the Rape Abuse Incest Network. And so, you know, survivor rights and trigger warnings and those kind of things are very important to me. All of that said, if you consider yourself on my side and you think that after this conversation, the way to prove that is to send James mean tweets or mean emails, you are hurting, not helping.

0:08:19 Guest: And listen, I'm excited to talk to James because he's a doctor who's taking time off his book tour to talk to the movie review guy from GAM. Like that's an incredibly kind thing of him to do and an incredibly intellectually defensible thing for him to do. And I think he deserves nothing but praise for that. So again, if you end up disagreeing with James because of this conversation, don't send him mean tweets. I don't want to see it. If I do, I am going to call it out. You are not on my side and this is the reason why this – I, I think this is part of the reason why this conversation hasn't happened earlier. So I wanted to say that at the outset. Do you want me to jump in a little bit and add to that? You can if you want to. You certainly don't have to. I just, I wanted it to say it. I mean, that's part of why this conversation is very difficult to have your, your, to have this conversation in a sense, what you almost have to be doing from, not from my perspective, but just in general.

0:09:10 Guest: In fact, I think our mutual acquaintance, Ben Young, is the one who you mentioned this, that I have to step up here and take a posture that's going to appear that I'm against social justice, which sounds pretty horrible. When I suggested that this conversation was a possibility to my agent, he immediately responded with, don't do it. Absolutely do not do it, it is a PR nightmare to even get involved in something like this, and so I appreciate your your acknowledgement. I don't actually need you. It's a kind offer for you to offer to jump in and call out and you know, whatever else. I have a fairly thick skin at this point and I'm not particularly worried about it one way or the other. Um, as you said, I feel in agreement with you and I think we will find that we agree on a lot more than we think we do.

0:09:58 Guest: I, I, I have, uh, the same opinion that you do that really what's going on here is that people that, that want to jump in with vituperative statements or emails or so on and so forth are hurting their cause more than they're helping it. In fact, that's one of the points that I want to make today. So I'm glad we're already in agreement on that. All right. Excellent. Great. So we had talked a little about the subjects that we were going to discuss, and I think one of your tweets is a fantastic place to start. It has to do with safe spaces, and it is, quote, safe spaces are Plato's cave. Cave.

0:10:33 Guest: Talk me through that. Talk me through your thinking there. Maybe familiar ways, people who are listening, what Plato's cave is. I'm not going to lie. I had to Google it. So maybe you can walk us through your thinking there because as a safe spacer, immediately my hackles went up. So I'm interested in sort of hearing your thoughts on expanding that. Okay.

So, I will talk about the Plato cave allegory, although my background's not in philosophy, so I'm nicht going to do this probably the greatest justice, but Plato put up forth an allegory about life in general that he talked about people being essentially as though they're chained in a cave facing a wall, and behind them is in front of them is a screen, and behind them is wall, so that when people or characters walk behind the wall, they hold up figures, like a say a statue of a cow or a little object here, there, and it casts a shadow from some fire set behind that, it casts a shadow on the wall. So these prisoners in the cave, all they see is the shadow of the object, and that's their entire reality. So they don't see the object itself, they don't even know that there's a real object.

And then in the story it goes on to talk about that eventually somebody gets free from the chains, and they come around and they see the objects, they see the parade of puppeteers carrying these things across, and they work their way out of the cave, and they see the sunlight, and at first the sunlight's overwhelming because they've spent their whole lives in a cave, and it's blinding and it hurts, and they can't see for a long time.

And then they come to see the, the reality of the world is what the metaphor is speaking for, and so then they become very enthusiastic about how much life better, how much better life is. You would call this maybe blue pill thinking in reference to the movie The Matrix.

0:12:18 Guest: And then get very enthusiastic, and then want to go back into the cave, and they want to tell other people. But if they do, when they first go into the cave, because they've been out in the sunlight, it's pitch dark and they can't see. And so when they go in, the other people that are chained up are going to think, oh my gosh, you know, going outside blinds you, it hurts you. And so they're not going to be willing to, and anybody who tries to free them or take them out, they may become angrier or violent with those people to try to keep themselves locked in the, the situation that they're in. And so that's the cave allegory. In order to talk about how I think safe spaces constitute Plato's cave, we have to become very, very clear on what I mean and what you mean by the word safe space, because they don't agree.

0:13:03 Guest: And like I said, I think we're going to agree on a lot of things more than you expect. And one of the things I think we're going to agree on is that when I use the phrase safe space in the context that I did in that tweet, you would, would agree with me. And when you use the word safe space in the context that you usually mean, where it got your wrinkles up, that I would agree with you. And so I want to be very clear about the concept of safe space. So I know that you have a very particular definition of the term safe space, so before I continue, why don't you go ahead and explain for everybody what a safe space is, since you were kind of an expert on that. So, I use the sort of operative definition, and I think a lot of people have heard this but don't really understand sort of what it means in a lot of places.

0:13:49 Guest: So I think the Advocates for Youth definition is a good one or at least a good place to start, but I can talk a little about my practical experience with it as well. So the Advocate for Youth Definition is, quote, a place where anyone can relax and be fully self-expressed without fear of being made to feel uncomfortable, unwelcomed, or challenged on account of biological sex.

And then they list a whole bunch of things, race, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, cultural background, age, physical mental ability, a place where the rules guard each person's self-respect, dignity, and feelings, and strongly encourage everyone to respect others. Now, that sort of seems hinky, and I want to say that I think another place we're going to agree, and this podcast might just turn out to just be us agreeing with each other over and over Again, is that this is a definition that has been misused and misdefined for some really, really insidious causes. You know, the best example I think being, you know, throwing a projector at Miriam Namazi's head while she's talking and yelling the word safe space.

It's just like, and what I want to differentiate is as someone who has run safe spaces, been in safe spaces, the crux of what I believe a safe space is and how they are used, and how I worked in them then and how I'm working them still today when I operate them or exist in them, is a safe place is, is a place for someone to go and talk about their experience of whatever it may be, their race, their gender identity, whatever it is, unquestioned and unchallenged.

0:14:35 Thomas: Uh-oh.

0:15:21 Guest: And I think that's what makes up the core of a official safe space. And I think that anything that misuses that term is not only harmful, but it is damaging to both sides of the conversation. So that's how I would use the term. Okay. And so I would actually agree agree with you in this.

And so I would understand completely why you would be at arms when I say something like "safe spaces" or Plato's cave, because when I'm using it, I'm losing it more nearly to what the Islamist, the Islamic Society at Goldsmiths was doing when they threw a projector and said, "This is a safe space." And the case that I'd actually like to make - so if I'm understanding you correctly, so correct me if I're wrong, you said a few keywords that I want to bring up that you mentioned, that this is the space that's set aside.

You mentioned that there's a place where there are rules that protect the space from certain kinds of behavior and other things like that, and I'm right with that? Correct. Yes, absolutely. Okay, so such a space is then, in a sense, for me to put it in my own words, what we might consider, um, something akin to a, uh, support group that sometimes invites listeners. Um, yeah, that would, that would be a good - I mean, it's layman's terms, but that would be an excellent way to put it. Yes. Okay. I don't have a problem with this.

And in fact, I think pretty much everybody understands that people, college students included, and maybe in particular because of the developmental challenges with that stage of life and the environment that they're in, need a place to go where they are able to meet with like-minded people and voice their experience and so on and so forth.

0:16:57 Guest: And I don't think anybody disagrees with with that. Um, you could probably make some kind of a convoluted case that a safe space in that context is like the Plato's cave thing, but you're entering it voluntarily and can leave when you want, uh, as opposed to being chained in it. Uh, I'm not going to try to make that case. I'm not particularly worried about it. The case that I would rather make is that the, the term safe space. And you said these, these are abuses of the term and so on and so forth.

0:17:23 Guest: And I don't - meaning of the term, that the meaning of the term has gotten away. I'll draw an example - I know that you are not a particular, well, you are, you have kind of a love-hate relationship with Richard Dawkins's work, and I want to make an analogy from Richard Dawkins, which is his concept of a meme, the meme theory that he put forth so long ago, and you know, this became a little branch of research for a little while, is it - is meme theory, you know, valid, is it invalid, whatever, and this had its own thing, but meme had a very specific, specific definition as a replicable idea that spreads via culture, rather like the way a gene does. Uh, but it's kind of like the cultural variant of, of genetic information. And it's an interesting idea.

0:18:10 Guest: But if I say a meme now, if I Say, well, you know, um, so-and-so is a atheist crusader who argues by memes. That's not what we're talking about anymore. We're talking About people who put like a picture of a dinosaur scratching its chin on the internet with funny words on it. So a couple of years ago, Richard Dawkins figured this out and got pretty wrinkled about it. Like my term, you know, come back. And his term was gone. And eventually he had to concede. The term has moved on. The definition left him. And so what I think has happened, and I applaud your attempt to make it more clear what the term safe space originally meant and what it probably should mean, the term has gotten away way from, from that. Uh, as you brought up the example at Goldsmiths, there are dozens of examples.

0:18:59 Guest: So I know you've talked a lot about the Yale situation and the Yale situation, the exact language that the students used was that they wanted their residential college and their entire university to become a safe space. That was exactly the wording that they used. The same thing happened with a sexual assault task force at Brown university. Uh they wanted the campus to be a safe And so the term has gotten away from a closed door, invitation only, rules protected kind of space where you go to something that has spread. And I think I know why, if we want to talk about that, there's a very natural progression. And I think it's really unfortunate that it has happened, but it kind of might have been predictable, but nobody ever sees these things coming sometimes.

0:19:47 Guest: And so what I want to say is that when the people that you're upset with, criticizing the term safe space, are criticizing it - at least when I am, and I think I'm in agreement with most of the other ones that I'm aware of - we're talking about the term as it has gotten away. And if you want to go, you can look on Google Trends, you can see that the phrase "safe space" has had relatively steady usage in terms of how often it's being applied over the past many, many years, maybe, maybe decade. And then all of a sudden, you know, late 2014, it spikes. Something happened, especially - it spikes even higher in 2015, which is when the whole thing erupted at Yale and so on and so forth. And all of these examples from other universities start coming out.

0:20:33 Guest: And what happened, I believe, is that the word left its narrow usage, the one that you defend, end, the one that I don't think anybody has a problem with, and became a new kind of creeping phenomenon that is really concerned with exactly the same thing that a narrow closed safe space is concerned with, but in an open environment. And that's why you call it an abuse of the term. And it is. The entire campus cannot be a safe space in the sense of what an actual safe space was meant to be, because it's an open environmenet. It's not time limited. It' It's not space limited. It's not governed by a agency that has the authority to restrict speech, which is how safe spaces operate. If people can share their experience without being challenged, that by nature restricts speech.

0:21:22 Guest: If you try to restrict speech over the entire campus or the dorm or whatever, you now have a First Amendment issue, a big one. And so that can't happen. But what I want to convince you of really is that first, you're not wrong when you're talking about safe spaces in the context that you're taking about. But you've lost the term. The term doesn't mean just that anymore. And if you keep arguing it that way, you are missing the entire relevant part of the discussion. And I would if I were in your shoes, I would be wrinkled the same way, just like where Dawkins was wrinkLED about the word meme getting away from him. That's my word. What are you doing? But kids or the Internet or something took it and ran with it and turned it into something it wasn't intended to be.

0:22:09 Guest: And now it means something different. And what it means now is really what has to be contended with. So I don't know. Do you agree that that this situation has happened and that it's unfortunate? I think I completely agree that the situation's happened, that it has spread as a meme. And actually, I think you put it incredibly well in a ton of ways. I want to break what you just said into two sections and sort of handle one first and then the other, because I do disagree with you on one place. And I think this, lest I just end up going, well, James is super smart the entire podcast. Where I want to push back at you is as someone who currently works in, coordinates safe spaces, when you say that that's what the term means now, that the term has gotten away from me, I disagree.

0:22:56 Guest: And more importantly, and maybe this will just be a matter of our differing opinions, more importantly, the people who utilize safe spaces, when they read a tweet like yours, or when they write a tweet or a speech or hear someone talking about safe spaces in a way that's critical of them, what's happening right now is that the speakers are not clarifying the difference between this meme that does not fit the generation and, for instance, the kids that I used to mentor at RAINN. So, you know, I talk about all the time, and I've mentioned him on this show before, my foster brother who is trans and uses safe spaces, or my buddy Callie Wright, or my buddy Ari over at the Gaytheist Manifesto, all of whom coordinate and use safe spaces.

0:23:41 Guest: When they read your tweet, they do not get the brackets of, of course, I'm not talking about this specific use of safe spaces, which I would argue is infinitely more common than the abuses. I mean, you said there's dozens of examples. Absolutely, there are dozens of examples. There are hundreds upon hundreds of safe spaces that operate day in, day out according to my definition and every time someone abuses the definition, it makes the news. It would be like me saying, to me, it would be like me saying, are you aware of teriology, James? I am not aware of teriology. Do you know the actor Terrence Howard? You're going to love this. Carry on. Terrence, Terrence Howard is an actor who, when he was a chemistry major in college, and you can Google him and you'll recognize him totally right away.

0:24:28 Guest: He realized that if four divided by two was two and two divided by one was, uh, two divided by two.

0:24:36 Thomas: Was two.

0:24:37 Guest: Was two. You know what my PhD is in, right? Eli in math, right. Yeah. Okay. Keep keep going.

0:24:37 Thomas: No, two. One was. And you haven't studied this, James? I don't get it.

0:24:45 Guest: Yeah, exactly. So he, you know, he, and then he realized that if, if four divided by four, two was two and two divided by two was one, then one divided by one had to be zero. And he has a whole thing. There's a bonkers interview with him in Rolling Stone where he's just like, look, I have plastic thing models. I made of why one divided By one is zero. It would be like me saying, tweeting that article out and saying, look at what mathematics has become. And I think you would fairly say to me in that moment, that's an abuse of the term. Or if I were to say everything Joe Rogan's ever said about the moon landing or the JFK assassination is representative of atheism. You know, we've got way more than a dozen examples of Joe Rogan saying something stupid.

0:25:32 Guest: I mean, we got more than we got more than a thousand examples of me saying something stupid, and I'm an atheist, you know, to point the gun backwards at myself. So where I think we disagree is, as someone who's working in safe spaces, who works with safe spaces and communicates with people in those circles all the time. Yes, there are dozens of examples of misuse. But I would say there are dozens of examples of misuse of all terms. And when you say things like "safe spaces" or "Plato's cave" and you mean this other thing, I think you do a tremendous disservice to the people who need those safe spaces and to the people who look to you as atheist leadership. I mean, I know that term is icky and people really hate when I use it, but like I read your book and it's like, me more than a lot, are going to have real issues with, I don't even think there should be an atheist community. No, I know. I read your book.

0:26:17 Guest: I wrote your book, but you know, you know what I mean by like a secular leadership. Is that okay in the common parlance or is that sort of break down the idea? I know what you mean. Okay. So when, when someone looks to you, if I utilize a safe space and I see that tweet, I don't see those brackets. I think it's tremendously harmful, you know? And I, and there's lots of examples of this in the atheist community of, I want to constituents ascribe the absolute best intentions to people who disagree with these terms, but they seem to completely ignore the damage that they do along the way. The very real exclusionary, outgrouping. The exclusionary outgroupING that takes place when tweets like that and messages like that get sent. I mean, and if I can give an example, is that all right? You may give an example.

0:27:03 Guest: All right. Of course. So Peter recently tweeted out, Peter Boghossian, and again, we're not talking about Peter, but he tweeted this out, and I think this is really interesting. He tweeted out 20 great value college safe spaces, right? And the caption that he put on that was 20 nurseries where you'll strengthen the conclusions you came in with. Now, these are specifically the kind of safe spaces that I define. And in that list of safe spaces, there were two that were green zone. Green zone is safe spaces for veterans. One secular safe space at West Virginia University for atheist students, and 18 of the 20 were LGBTQ based. So, I mean, when people look to, again, I'm going to abuse that term, so you got to forgive me, atheist leadership, and they see them saying something like that, when my foster brother, who's trans, sees that, or when my fiance who identifies as a feminist sees that and sees the vitriol coming from atheist leadership to that, they have no option but to feel I am not welcome here.

0:28:02 Guest: This person hates this terminology and wants me to be ashamed of needing it and utilizing it. So that's where I think we disagree. Sorry. No, actually, we don't disagree on that. And I see that point. And to what you just said, I mean, there's a number of things, and I don't want this - us to get all like windy and twisty, as both of us tend to be talkers. Um, the...

0:28:24 Thomas: Well.

0:28:25 Guest: The first thing, where you said that, uh, you know, people see this and then they're, they're left with it's really the last thing you said that there was no option for them other than to feel excluded and, and hurt and upset. Well, there is an option, and I will admit that it's a difficult one, which is to have exactly the kind of conversation that we're having.

So I'm even more glad that we're having it now, because, and I'm not going to speak for Pete, but I will speak for myself had I said the same thing, and in many regards, I do feel like I would say something like that and I would realize while saying it that, that it is callous toward the people who mean it, mean the term "safe space" in the in the way that you're, you're meaning it.

And the reasons that I would be encouraged to say something like that would be particularly the highly publicized safe space that was set up at Brown University when there was a debate scheduled about about rape statistics, where they set up a safe space for people to recover, or to hide from—and that's their wording, not mine—to escape from, I think, was their wording, from the talk if they went and and found it too upsetting, which, of course, you could just not go. But that's beside the point.

That particular safe space, and this was publicized by by Judith Shilovitz in The New York Times, that one set up bubbles and puppies and very Plato and coloring books and a lot of things associated with early childhood. And so the nursery thing is going to be connected to that, that there are a lot of aspects of of some

0:30:03 Guest: Of these highly publicized ones, and probably many others, where you're not talking about something that's like a support group type situation, but you're actually talking about a place that's filled with what psychologists would literally define as, uh, accessories to the defense mechanism called regression, which is a stage three or neurotic, uh, defense mechanism. It's a temporary - I wrote down the definition just in case - the, a temporary reversion of the ego to an earlier stage of development rather than handling unacceptable impulses in a more adult way. And so this backlash that you're very upset about is coming from the fact that some of these very highly publicized, if you want to insist that they're called abuses of the term, but I'm going to say uses of the term "safe space," literally are using things like denial and regression, which are pathological defense mechanisms, like psychologically defined as pathological, defense mechanisms as accessories to deal with the confrontation of disquieting ideas.

0:31:11 Guest: So here's what I would say is a summary of the problem. Let me grab this real quick, because I want to talk about the Brown space, but go ahead. Because we have what we need is I agree that people, for instance myself, and I will say with my Plato's cave tweet, need to be aware that many people are attaching the very specific meaning to the word. And then many people that are insulted by seeing that need to also be aware that there is this other very, very insidious, literally very damaging use of the term that is creeping into the primary usage of the terms in more and more and discussions, to where you do have signatories on over 740 students at Yale signing that they want their campus to be made a safe space.

0:32:09 Guest: I mean, that's a gigantic number of students asking for something that is in the narrow definition that matters, a category error. And probably I did check on this, probably illegal. So when you try to turn an entire university, for instance, into a controlled speech safe space, you have literally got a serious First Amendment issue that's landing on your hands. I

0:32:35 Thomas: And sorry to jump in, but who makes the rules for that safe space, you know, like when it's an entire campus? I understand in the restricted... use...

0:32:43 Guest: Mean, we can get into

0:32:43 Thomas: You know, yeah.

0:32:44 Guest: That, but I don't want to get this too diluted, but that's when Jonathan Haidt and Sam Harris had the discussion and took it to a place where they were saying that they started comparing things to North Korea. I think they were talking about this is the road toward North Korea where you have people, where you have some authority that has now gotten some kind of institution. Well, you have some organization or group that is now wheedled its way into institutional authority that then becomes kind of like the overarching the authority that people would go to. So it would be perhaps a highly expanded, in that case, Thomas, a highly expanded diversity office or something like that that has, in very real sense, outgrown its britches and become something that is going to get destroyed by a First Amendment lawsuit. All right, so I want to touch on it because you just covered a lot, and I wantto touch on a lot of it.

0:32:45 Thomas: Sure. Sure, sure. Go ahead. No.

0:33:34 Guest: So, again, I know I said I was going to break the last thing you said into two chunks, and now I'm breaking this into chunks. And again, that's due to the nature. But the first thing I want to clarify is, because I think you pushed back slightly against sort of whether or not this is an abuse of the term, or whether or not it's creeping.

And again, I just want to clarify, as someone who works in safe spaces and has done a tremendous amount of research and study of this subject, that the vast, vast majority of the use of the word "safe space" is not an abuse. So for me, while I completely understand and give and believe you when you say – not believe you, but you understand what I mean in part. I understand what you mean. Yeah.

When you say that I'm talking about this creeping concept, you should know that the – I want to just affirm the vast majority of safe spaces are not this problematic idea that creeps. To move to the Brown safe space, because I know a little about that. First of all, I want to push back against the sort of regression definition. While the definition you gave of regression is correct, there's also just comfort therapy. And that's something that's not necessarily always harmful. And especially in the Brown talk, and we sort of skated over this, this is Summers, right? The Brown talk? This is when Summers came and spoke. Actually, I thought it was Summers.

But I don't think it was actually Summers who came. It was was a debate from Shulowitz's summary of it. It was a debate, and I don't have it in front of me, so I don't have the name of the two people. But it was a debate between somebody who, between two people who wanted to address rape statistics on campus. All right.

So what happens is a lot of the time, and I don't think we disagree with this, if there are students who do want to expose themselves, especially survivors, and again, having worked with RAINN, I know how hard this is for survivors.

0:35:19 Guest: When they want want to expose themselves to someone, and again, I don't know who was speaking, but I know that this has happened with Summers. So I'll just use Summers as an example. When you want to expose yourself to someone like Summers, who says that there's not a rape crisis on campus, there's a rape panic, who has at least indicated or implied to victims that victims of date rape are not victims of rape.

And whether or not she meant that or not, it's what a lot of people have received from her. She said a lot of things that are very, very hard for victims to hear, for survivors to hear. And so for survivors who need to go to a place that is comforting, I would not define that as regressive. I would define that is comfort. Just as someone might need to away from a space where someone wants to abuse the statistic of how many accusations Are dropped and say that those are false accusations, as someone who's a survivor, who might have heard that levied at them or might have heard that levied about them, that's incredibly difficult to hear. So for them to go to a place with puppies and milk and bubbles, I'm sorry, to me, that is not regressive. That is someone taking a moment to compose themselves after dealing with some really, really hard topics.

And to push back, again, just a little bit against that, I got to say that while I totally agree with I totally agree with being against the definition of safe space as you use it, and I'll rail on that right along with you. I think that it's worth considering all of the people whose experience you dismiss and who you do real emotional damage to when you don't consider what your words might mean to them.

0:37:02 Guest: I hear you. In fact, I would agree with that. And so first, about the regression, because I'm really going to stand my ground on that point. Again, the definition is a temporary reversion of the ego to an earlier stage of development. And so a space such as the one set up at Brown could be comforting in any number of ways. We could play a game and waste our listeners' time where we try to come up with as many adult oriented themes that could serve as a comfort or even college age, you know, early 20s, late teens, comforting themes that aren't things that our culture rampantly associates with eight year olds. And so I'm going to stand my ground on that the choice of that particular safe space, and maybe it's unfortunate, maybe it's unfortunate that it happened to be the one that got publicized, but pretty much all sides on all arguments always take extreme examples.

0:37:56 Guest: I don't know what goes on in most safe spaces. I can't imagine that the majority of safe spaces, for instance, that you set up at videos of puppies and bubbles in Play-Doh. I just can't imagine that it's possible that the majority of them do. But this particular space was seeking comfort therapy by reversion to childhood, and that is regression. Just to push back against that, sorry, go ahead. Don't let me interrupt you. Well, no, if you want to push against that, we'll do that now because I want to, the other topic is separate. Exactly. We're getting to the nitty gritty, but even the definition, it's the regression of the ego, right? I mean, mean, what's going to happen when you go into a space filled with childish things in order to calm down? Yeah. So the, the regression of the ego would be the conscious, I think regression as it's used.

0:38:41 Guest: And again, I'm going back to, to my psych classes in college, which get further and further away every second, but regression as it's used, certainly clinically is often almost a schizophrenic break. It's not behavior. No, no, no. The example that's not applied to comfort. The example that's given actually is whining as opposed to trying to have a more centered and reason-based argument or discussion.

0:39:07 Guest: My question would become like – because labeling something regressive because it's childlike is just – to me it falls into a category of very clinical definition of something that someone needs very temporarily.

I just don't think it's – and again, I have no larger training on this, but I can speak I think to someone who's been around – and, again, the safe spaces I've been in, which at this point is probably half a dozen, never puppies, although there have been like group hugs and stuff like that. I mean that's not developmentally inappropriate for any age group, so OK.

OK, but but the point of that is that I think in order to talk about that being harmful and again, you just said, you know, you haven't been in a lot of safe spaces as someone who has, Again, to talk like that about safe spaces based on these bad examples just does a tremendous amount of disservice to people who would otherwise not only be welcomed into the community by you, but people who who would learn it. I loved your book. I love your book and we, and we and we're having a conversation. So I read it. If I just read your Twitter, I would never have read your book, I would have written you off.

And there's no way my fiance wouldn't, there's no way my brother in law would, because they would look at that. And they would say, "Ah, another atheist, who is telling me I'm not welcome," you know, when Dawkins, and look, here's the thing, there's another side to that video that Dawkins put up, which is the Islamists and the feminists. And I don't, I don't, I don't want to speak to his intentions at all, which is the really contentious relationship that's taken place with him.

0:40:44 Guest: But if you do not – if you're not an atheism nerd like me and you haven't followed that story the entire time and you just go, "Man, I love The God Delusion. Let me see what Richard Dawkins says. I'm a feminist." And you open up your version of the Disney Crows you have that's of feminism, you have absolutely no inkling of what his quote-unquote actual meaning is, except to know that Richard Dawkins, who has millions of followers, rejects you, rejects your self-identification. So again, I'm just saying you're, I mean, okay, so that's a lot of babies out with some real, I understand, I understand that that will happen, and I don't think that that's necessarily the best thing to happen. I do want to say that – so you may say that such a person is creating an atmosphere that feels unwelcoming, but I don't think you can say that they are intentionally or even unintentionally rejecting or accusing anybody, because I certainly for myself have never done such a thing.

0:41:40 Guest: And you had an issue with my particular tweet about safe spaces as being exclusionary and hurtful and even damaging and harmful, were the actual words that you used. And so was certainly nowhere in my intention. And so I see that it's possible to generalize from Dawkins's use of that video and his commentary, and the fact especially that he immediately took it down and apologized once he realized that the woman involved is a real person and he didn't mean to insult her. Whether she deserves insult or not is another discussion, but he didn't want to do it. To say something along those lines is an assumption of intent that I don't think we have. I can understand why somebody would interpret this as being unwelcoming, but to say that the person is being unwelcome. Now, I wanted, before I get to the, actually, I'm just going to state the thing that I wanted to say, the second part, and then I want to ask you a question about something you you just said.

0:42:35 Guest: So the second thing I wanted to say is what I, and this is short, I really think that what's needed here then by listening to you now, presenting my side of the case, listening to your side of case and having this discussion that's kind of started to swirl. What's needed is that in general, be that people like myself, be the people like you, but especially people who are interested in promoting the social justice movement. And I'm not talking about social justice and more broadly, I'm talking about the activist movement, which is what people often call social justice warriors, have a tremendous onus put on them right now to make it very clear that the term safe space is being abused. And instead of holding up people like Bogosian or Dawkins and saying, you guys are using the word wrong, which be that as it may, they're reacting, They're responding to what the presentation of the phrase is in the largest publication outlets in the country and sometimes in the world.

0:43:34 Guest: The uses that are appearing in the New York Times, the uses that are appearing in The Wall Street Journal, in The Atlantic. These are the uses of the term they're responding to. And you can say that they have a responsibility to learn the proper definition of it. But at the same time, anybody who wants a social justice activism movement to succeed has a even stronger impulse put on, or impetus put on them, to make it very clear that social justice activists who are misusing this term in high profile ways are hurting the living crap out of the movement. And if they don't wheel it in, if you don't find another way to describe the concept, and I actually, I think you guys are screwed. I don't think you can do it. I think the decision to name them safe spaces in the first place is where it went wrong. And I don't know how it can be remedied at this point.

0:44:22 Guest: But if I were a social justice activist, I can't say that if I was, what I would do. If I were, but I'm going to, if I were one and I have a mindset like I have, my main goal regarding the safe space discussion would be to point out to the group that I am affiliated with that the term is getting away from us and it is being used in ways that are creating a lot of damage for the goals of the movement, which I think actually you're going to find that people like Richard Dawkins are very much in line with many of the, uh, the nominal goals of the movement. Whether those are the goals that come out in practice or not are another matter, but the idea that the equality of women, an open and inclusive space for gays and trans, all of these, these are all values that pretty much everybody that I'm aware of that you've mentioned seems to espouse.

0:45:12 Guest: For instance, just to give you an idea of that, something like 15% or 20%, depending on the poll that you look at, of British people right now consider themselves feminists. Something like 66, 68% consider themselves, quote, definitely not a feminist. So that's this is the thing. This is where feminism is at. And this number has dropped. And it's like 10%. One out of 10 British men consider themselves a feminist. But I just saw a thing where Richard Dawkins talked less than a year ago or just over a year go now. Time flies. I'm not quite sure. But it's been in the last. It's been recently since all of this stuff has started to blow up on him where he made a very certain point. And he's made this point many times, that he describes himself as a feminist. He is one out of 10.

0:45:57 Guest: One out of 10 British men describe themselves as a feminists, and something like seven out of ten describe themselves is definitely not feminists. And Richard Dawkins is in that one out of 10. It's very difficult to make a substantive case that because he has an attitude about particular portrayals of feminism or particular, particular means that certain feminists or subgroups of feminists are using, that he's an anti-feminist or anti-woman uh character. So that brings me to the other piece, which is the Disney Crows thing. What do you mean by that? I've heard you say that he is a Disney Crow, and I don't mean what you mean about that.

0:46:32 Thomas: No.

0:46:32 Guest: In terms of feminism, I want to know which, which cartoon you're talking about. Do you not know, Dumbo? Dumbo, that's what I thought. Because I looked this up. Do I, this is a terrible example and you should stop using it. Dumbo was made in 1941. Do you know who those crows were played by? They were played by the Hall-Johnson Orchestra. Hall-Johnson, Francis Hall-Johnson, was a black musician born in Georgia in the late 1800s who was absolutely instrumental in bringing black music and culture into the white mainstream in a very racist, pre-civil rights era United States. His orchestra and he were considered very intelligent.

0:46:32 Thomas: Right.

0:47:19 Guest: His orchestra, he was considered a genius, actually. He was highly, highly acclaimed, highly respected, had extremely proficient roles. And Disney included him in the Dumbo movie as the Crows, specifically to lambast racism. Racism. They were the first characters in that movie who were kind to Dumbo, other than his friend, the little mouse. I forget what the mouse's name is, Timothy, or something. They were the first characters who didn't put Dumbo down.

They were the first characters who met with him and said, hey, look, I get it. You're an outcast. We're outcasts, but you know, it's cool, because we're, you know, once they got done making fun of him, which is the first thing they did, uh, teasing him, actually, uh, I ain't seen an elephant fly, or whatever the the wording is, and remember, this was sung by a black orchestra who was highly acclaimed in very instrumental and bringing black music.

Basically, what was going on was that that black musical traditions were being, essentially, if you want to use modern terminology, kind of appropriated by barbershop quartets and presented in these ways, and Hall Johnson's mission before he got on Dumbo was particularly to bring the original black soul back into it, and this literally, so you see the collision, black soul, Motown, black soul, and and barbershop quartet was the foundation for the entire Motown movement that mainstreamed black music and played such an instrumental role, probably even in the development of rock and roll, uh, which came from southern blues getting mixed with some other sounds. And so these guys were included as they were, specifically to be good guys in the film.

0:48:57 Guest: And then the fact that they sound black and are portrayed as black crows is just a matter of accuracy. That's how black rural folk spoke at the time. There's nothing There's nothing racist about that. It's a matter of historical accuracy. Walt Disney even himself said that the whole point of making the lead crow named Jim Crow, which was renamed from the original screenplay, which is Dandy Crow at the time, they renamed him Jim Crow and had him played by a white voice actor, the guy who also voiced Jiminy Cricket, whose name I forget. Had that as Jim Crow as a extra layer of poking at the racist Jim Crow laws. They were trying to bring down the racist establishment.

0:49:42 Guest: So I'm thinking that that's not your best example. I, I am totally, you're proposing, I just want to be clear, because I feel like I'm straw manning you. You're proposing that the Disney crows from Dumbo were lambasting racism and are, in fact, and anti-racist commentary within the movie. Well, if you disagree, then you're saying that Hall Johnson, who signed up for this enthusiastically, was too dumb and got tricked by Walt Disney. So there are plenty of African-American, there are, um, I, I didn't use the term racist, uh, but, or maybe I did, but I certainly didn't want to, um, I'm going to avoid the term, um, there are many of Afro-Americans who performed in blackface, who performed in minstrel shows.

0:50:28 Guest: And the relative accuracy to speech at the time might just have been the same. I don't know, but I certainly know that we wouldn't go back and call minstral shows a lambasting of racial laws at the same time. And to say that he's called Jim Crow because they're lambasting Jim Crow, I actually think the timeline on that, I'm not sure if the time, I should say I'm not sure. I'm not sure if the timeline on that particularly works out. I think Jim Crow laws are named after a specific, if you will, meme, a specific racist meme. And I believe that's what Jim Crow is based on. I do not think saying, well, a black actor participated in it.

0:51:17 Guest: And that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that this is documented as being an explicit decision on the part of Walt Disney collaborating with Hal Johnson. Again, Al Jolson, like there's plenty of cases of African-American, I mean, Al Jolson's not one of them, but there's many cases of African-american performers who perform in blackface, who perform in minstrel shows. Are those also lambasting racist racism at the time? I'm just really confused. I don't know. Oh, the answer is no. Sorry, that was a trick question. The answer is that you would have to analyze that on a case-by-case basis. And find out what the intentions of the people involved were, which is why we shouldn't be assuming people's intentions like Peter Boghossian or Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris or any of these folks when it comes to something sexist or racist or apparently so.

0:52:04 Guest: You say that there are some cases of blackface minstrel performances that possibly could have been lambasting racism. I don't know. I just know that I looked up the history, the specific history of this case. And And in this case, and you should watch the scene from Dumbo again. The scene isn't that long. It's only like eight minutes where the crows are involved at all near the end of the movie. There's nothing negative or derogatory presented at all. They're the first friends that Dumbo has. They're positive characters. The only black, obviously black characters in the movie are positive. And to jump to that this is a racist portrayal is pretty confused. They are universally agreed. Agreed. They are universally agreed to be a racist portrayal. I've never heard anyone defend them as a non-racist portrayal in my entire life. I mean, I saw all this on Buzzfeed and Vox and Vice. I saw this, but I looked up Hal Johnson and this started with Hal Johnson, and worked that way.

Why would Hal Johnson an intelligent, successful, one of the most successful black musicians of the time, why would he have taken on this project in collaboration with Walt Disney, If it was going to work directly against his goals and so in a tremendous amount of African-American minority and otherwise, you know, oppressed groups who have worked in whatever kind of face you choose, because that's the only way they could work. I mean, I believe I don't remember who this isn't the case with Hal Johnson. Hal Johnson had one of the biggest musical musical acts going at the time.

0:53:40 Guest: He wasn't a small character. He was chosen on purpose. He had an extremely successful career at this point. He would have been in his late 50s. But he's still a black man in the 1940s. It's not like he's Jay-Z. He doesn't get to pick projects. If you get told to do blackface in the 1980s, no matter how successful you are, you're still a black artist. And it's, I mean, again, I've never heard anyone say that that's not an offensive, derogatory portrayal of black people, even for the time. Just as minstrel shows were derogatorily. I've watched the movie. I use it as a hyperbolic example to relate to the video about feminists and Muslims when I say that it's his quote-unquote Disney crows, in that it is an incredibly offensive and derogatory video towards those two groups of people.

0:54:31 Guest: So this actually works out to be – first of all, this is going to be a fruitless discussion to pursue in its current vein. But it's a good jumping off point to another direction so that we don't continue to go in long circles. I'm sorry. I just wanted to reply to one more thing you said. You talked about Dawkins identifying himself as a feminist. I'm aware that lots of people, I'll say this, it sounds a little snippy. Lots of people don't know what the word feminist means. There are MRAs who call themselves feminists. Summers calls herself a feminist, Dawkins calls himself a feminist What does the word feminists mean? That is someone who promotes women's equality and women's rights around the world. And so when there are MRAs misusing that term because they've created their fourth wave feminism or whatever that is, calling oneself a feminist does not make one a feminist, especially when you list which the worst kinds of rape are on Twitter. Okay, so this is a very interesting question.

0:55:27 Guest: That's a whole other issue. But that's a very interesting question, because the same poll that indicates that 1 out of 10 British men are willing to identify themselves as feminists, and it's roughly 20% of Americans and Brits overall will identify as feminist right now. Nearly two-thirds say, or a little over two-third, if you focus on men, say that they are, quote, definitely not feminist. Yeah, 85%, 85% say they promote the equality of women in society. And that's because the social right has created a, I don't want to use the term straw man, but that's the one that jumps to my mind, has created an straw man of feminism. From my perspective, where I describe myself politically, I will say so, as left of left of center, but right of left.

0:56:14 Guest: So I am not a centrist. I am not a conservative. I'm not on the social right. I am pretty far on the left, as a matter of fact. But I'm not all the way. I would tell you that the straw man of feminism has come from the left. It has turned into what is often called Mott and Bailey equivocation on the term, where where it has become very forward-pressing that men aren't to talk, men aren't to have anything but suck it up, shut up and listen.

Oh, the poor men's, here's a cup of men's tears. I know that these are supposed to be ironic, but humor is very, – you're a comedian, so you know this. Humor is very indicative of an underlying truth presented in an exaggerated or distorted way in order to get a laugh. Half. You know that better than I do because you're probably funnier than I am. I'm not quite sure about that, to be honest, but we'll see. I mean, I'm funny. I're not smart, but I'm funny. Well, I got both. So I'm just kidding. All right. So no, a um, Mott and Bailey is a situation where, and people argue about what kind of a rhetorical move is it? Is it a, is it a fallacy? Is that a equivocation?

What is it um, I am not going to get into that at Jim's. I am just going to call it a Mout and Bailey. A Mout is a castle that's built up on a mound of earth that's extremely defended. It's almost impossible to overcome a mob. A bailey is a field around it where people live and work. It is usually good land and there's a wall around the whole bailey. Windsor Castle is a pretty good example. So the metaphor is that a bailey where people actually are or want to be.

0:57:53 Guest: So this whole idea like shut up men would be a portrayal of feminism that the far left has made its it's Bailey. The Mott is where they retreat when they realize that their position is not defensible. When somebody says, hey, you know, shut up, men, or men don't have a space, men can go away. That's sexist. And so you need to chill out. And then they retreat. No, no, no. It's just about the equality of women. That is retreating to a Mott. This is an equivocation. This is the exact same game that people like William Lane Craig play when they stand up and defend Christianity. And they say, Jesus this, Jesus that, blah, blah. Craig's not bad about saying you're going to burn in hell, but other Christians certainly are. And then you're like, Hey, yeah.

0:58:33 Guest: So other people are, it raises a Muslim though, not a Christian. I meant in terms of Mott and Bailey. Oh yeah. What you see is this is, this is very typical of, of ideological movements, period. It's very typical. So what happens is like people, Christians, a lot of times we'll get up and cause this is an atheistically speaking podcast. We use that as an example. They get get up and they're like, you know, Christianity is true. Jesus died for my sins. That's the Bailey. That's what they want to believe. And then you're like. Yeah, but how do you even know God exists? And they're, like, God is just the first cause is the uncaused cause. And that's philosophically good. Right back into the mind. What happens when you go away? The street preacher is already telling you you're going to hell for masturbating again. So that's how this works. So once an invading army comes, they climb the wall, they take over the Bailey, they try to take over the Mott.

0:59:18 Guest: People are shooting arrows out of it. They can't do it. They eventually give up. They leave. And then the people come back out into the Bailey where they were in the first place. So a Mott and Bailey rhetorical device is where you have a particular position that's stronger than what you can defend. And then you retreat to an easy to defend variation on it. Wait till people forget what's going on and then come back. And so I see this all the time with feminism. I see this all the time with third wave feminism, to be very specific. Third wave feminism has a very specific amount of ground that it wants to occupy that is very separate from the promotion of equality for women in society. 85% say they promote equality, 10% say their feminist or 20%.

1:00:05 Guest: Something's huge, hugely disparate there. And I don't think it's just a right wing propaganda campaign. People aren't, there aren't that many right wing people. They're not 10%. I would agree. Great. So, James, you've made the same point about the same stuff. And it's great, 'cause I actually wanted to go back to it. You've made this same point about two different subjects. And I really, I want to press on this and sort of die on this hill, if I may. We're really stuck in the battle metaphors here. And, um, you know, you talked about if you were a social justice, if you are a social justice crusader, like I consider myself to be, I would work on getting myself away from this kind of thing. And then you say, you know, feminism has these people who are in the Bailey and then they retreat to the Mott. And, and what I would say is we have almost a hundred years of feminist history that so-called people who are for equality would agree for.

1:00:56 Guest: And we have these pitter patter examples of, of feminists, you know, quote unquote going too far, and that's become the false Bailey. And I want to say that that is determinably and exemplarily not true, just with the safe spaces. When I say that there are hundreds of safe spaces operating 300 days a year or 200 days a year in a way that we both agree they should be, and you say, well, I think the focus should really be on you saying that you're not doing the bad thing. That's like when William Lane Craig or one of those guys says that atheists need to go out and condemn Pol Pot, or when that shooting happened in North Carolina and every anti-atheist in the world, Reza and Dean Abedallah, all jumped on us and were like, are you sorry for him?

1:01:43 Guest: And we were all like, what does one guy, he also liked motorcycles. That is what I'm hearing from you in both of these subjects is you're taking these tiny, tiny, demonstrably false outliers. And you're saying that they're the majority. You're saying they're in the face of a movement. You're saying they're creeping when they're not. And more, more importantly, they're not how the people who use the term are self-identifying. And, you know, this is something you talk, and I think it's really interesting, because you talk about this in your book and you talk about the uselessness of using theist, because people don't identify as theist. Right. And I actually thought that was a really interesting point. I was like, oh yeah, what a cool way to say that, by the same term, the people I know who identify, identify themselves as feminists, and myself included, when you attack that terminology, you're attacking the wrong version of it.

1:02:35 Guest: You should be addressing the version of it that the people who are using it are using. Same with safe spaces. I have some of the stuff that you've said about feminism. Again, I have to say, James, that while I totally agree with you that there have been silly parts of the feminist movement, just as there are silly parts of every movement. For you to say some of the things that you have said about feminism is wildly historically inaccurate, wildly inaccurate when it just comes to basic percentage. And my answer to the difference between the 85% and the 10% is that 85% of those men who say I'm equal but won't identify as feminist have been told by a centrist and right agenda. I agree, there aren't that many right, but we have right people who are against feminism.

1:03:20 Guest: You just describes. You're left to the right of the left of the right, right? Who are against feminism and have created this. I keep using the word straw man and I wish I had better things. I hate logical fallacies, but keep using these terms. And again, I just want to, I want to say some of the stuff, like for instance, you wrote, "Has feminist science figured out the gender of the sun yet?" It might be the article that I tweeted just a few weeks before where feminist science. Science tried to determine the gender of ice and glaciers. Do you know that's what I was mocking? So that was a Ph.D. doctorate thesis. That was, that was that got seven hundred and ten thousand dollars in National Academy of the Sciences grant money trying to. And it said explicitly on the abstract that its goal was to improve human-ice relations.

1:04:10 Guest: What the fuck is a human ice relation? I completely agree that that's silly. But James, this is a perfect example. I didn't know that you were referencing to the article from before. All I saw was a really dismissive tweet about feminism or about about feminist science. It says it directly in the tweet has feminist science. Why is there feminist science? Why? Not why are there feminist studies? I didn't say that. Why are there communist science? Why do they have their own science? This is indicative that what the word feminism has come to mean. And I will tell you as a member who I don't know whether I want to declare myself as a feminist or not. I'm not in the definitely not a feminist because I fully accept the correct definition of feminism, the one that's in the dictionary, the one that you quoted.

1:05:00 Guest: That's how I feel about it. And I strongly support that. And I work for it. I probably am further into that than a lot of people who also are in a similar position than I am. The problem is that it's not just a straw man. You have a significant contingent of the people that are self-identifying as feminists. I try as often as I can, given the constraints of Twitter to point out that I call them sometimes anger feminisms or angry feminisms, or third wave feminists, I mean a very specific subset. And I try to be as specific as I Can whenever I can. And this group of people is not promoting equality of women in society. They say they are, they think they are. But they are not. And this has created a gigantic societal backlash where you have two thirds of British citizens saying they will not, they are definitely not feminist.

1:05:51 Guest: And yet the majority of them, 85% must, must support the dictionary definition of feminism. There is some disparity here. There is some big problem here. And I would say that the big problem is in the understanding of feminism again, James, I, even if I grant that there's this large group of people that are misusing the term and I do, I mean, I wouldn't call them, they're definitely not the majority.

1:06:16 Guest: I would let me use, I'm sorry to, go ahead. I don't mean to interrupt. That's not fair. Well, no, I interrupted you first. So I felt like you got the stage back. Yeah, exactly. You win. But I think they are the incredibly small minority. And I think the reason that feminism has gotten the bad name that it has, and all you need to do is look to the people who are against feminism. I mean, look at the sides, who identifies as feminist and who are against feminists. You know, we, we have a very clear Donald Trump anti-feminist connection and we, we have a very clear feminist, social justice, liberals, equal rights contingency. And, you know, the fact that an anti-feminism vamp also happens to line up with a lot of what Trump says or a lot of what Cruz says, I think is important. I think it matters. I think the allies we find ourselves in in a fight should matter to us.

1:07:04 Guest: So what I wanted to jump to before, and we will shortly, is why this is what it is, because this is explained. But first I want to bring up an example to to make it more clear that I'm not talking and maybe it is a fringe element. I don't know what the proportion of people who represent third wave feminism. I would actually say it's probably roughly 10 or less, because clearly about 20 of people will label themselves feminists and roughly half of them or a quarter of them maybe are the problem. But everybody who is is this problem certainly is going to label themselves a feminist. Um, so people, people – and I know that this is a controversial topic on its own. But people who believe, for instance – so this would be a Bailey-style belief in my assessment – that the United States or the United Kingdom or Western Europe are under the thumb of an oppressive patriarchy.

1:07:56 Guest: This is a face of feminism. The people who belief that the U.S. is under this gigantic, almost conspiratorial force called patriarchy – So the question that becomes relevant is I'm not going to dispute whether or not this is true. I just know that there are some patriarchies that are that are a little bit more active. What I'm going to say is let's get a relative sense of this idea. And I'm Not going to put you in a corner, but I would love it if you're brave enough to answer this question. If you're not, just say so. I'm NOT going to I don't care. But let's say that Saudi Arabia is a nine out of 10 in patriarchy. OK, is the United States on that same scale? Scale? We're talking internationally? If Saudi Arabia's current culture is a 9 out of 10, what is the level of patriarchy in the United States?

1:08:44 Guest: I would say it's a 3 or a 4, something like that. So this is unfair, and I know you're not a math guy, so I don't mean, I've asked you an unclear question also. There are two ways that we can do the scale. One is linear, so every number means roughly the same amount of increase, and one is exponential, which is how earthquakes work. Like a magnitude two earthquake is very, very weak, but magnitude seven knocks down buildings. Which of those scales do you prefer? One that, say, every time you go up a number, it's twice as bad, or one where every time You go up, it is like a little bit worse? That's all very hard and confusing, and I'm too stupid for that.

1:09:19 Guest: Let me try this. One being Sweden, for instance, which still certainly has some problems, but one being Sweden, which is, I think, as equal a culture as one can really point to in the world today and say, yeah, that's that really that country really does not have or, you know, the problems with patriarchy there are being really well dealt with. And as long as you exclude a certain subset of that population, by the way, which is incredibly important and controversial to bring up. And we're not going to disagree on that, by the way. We can spend we can spend the next 45 minutes being like, yup, back and forth. But, you know, 10 being and that's another thing is Saudi Arabia is a nine. We don't need a 10. Right. Well, 10 being Afghanistan or something like that, you know, women beheaded in the streets for whatever it is. Right? So I would put America, I would put the United States somewhere at a three or a four.

1:09:19 Thomas: Can

1:10:08 Guest: Now here's the interesting thing. The question, I don't needs to know what a one is. I need to know a five is in order to determine which scale you're talking about. And you don't have to name a country, just kind of describe what a five like. I would say a five would be a country where there, there is even less economic and social opportunity and equality in education and professionally for women. Because I feel like my, my personal opinion on this is that if we use a geometric scale, like earthquakes, you can make a case for a four or a three somewhere in there. But if you're going to use a linear scale, a one is pushing it. You're going to say that, you know, you have five units of patriarchy per number that you go up and Saudi Arabia is, is a nine.

1:10:53 Guest: So it has, say, 45 units. You're going to have a hard time convincing a majority of people outside of third wave feminism that the United States is more than a one or a two, but even a two is really pushing it. Um, that we have some holdovers and some in some cultural attitudes that linger that are disadvantageous to women is beyond question. But women in the United States enjoy, short of a couple of countries in Western or Northern Europe, enjoy more equality and freedom than in any society in the history of the world. And except possibly a handful of indigenous cultures here and there that had total equality because they had 70 people and they could do that. When you have 330 million people, you can't, you aren't probably going to be able to pull it off quite so easily by, say, taking the guy who refuses to be equal and killing him or kicking him out, which is what they did.

1:11:48 Guest: Exile. So talking about one of the most equal societies. I'm not saying that it's perfect. I'm saying it's one of those equals. I am not trying to trivialize what problems there still are. I m saying that is one of most equal society s currently on the planet and in human history. So it's going to be difficult to make a case for a very large number is generally the point. Whatever that number may be, which, which is why I didn't want to put you on the spot, because numbers are going to be very difficult to defend on the spot when you haven't thought about the question before or looked into it. I mean, so I'm not going to judge your answer. I'm just going to say that that's my particular view on it. And I think instead of trying to defend our numbers, we could just leave it at that. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so what you brought up earlier though when you talked about feminism, and I think this is really interesting, is you talked abut this sort of idea of patriarchy being this almost, almost conspiratorial force.

1:12:41 Guest: And I think that is also a straw man. And again, I wish I had better words of what patriarchy is. Now, you're talking to someone who self-identifies as a feminist. And if you ask me if patriarchy's a problem, absolutely. But patriarchy isn't men in suits, you know, slowly drumming their fingers together going, no, and it's not in Saudi Arabia. The dollar. It's not in Saudi Arabia either. Right. So the point, it's not in Saudi Arabian, it is not in Afghanistan. You can go listen to imams talk about unwrapped dates falling on the floor and these people think they are protecting women. So by the same token, when people talk about the harm that patriarchy does, when you say that most feminists or even 10%, and I want to touch on that, by the way, because we would never ever identify or attack a group based on 10 at max.

1:13:35 Guest: And I'll grant you 10 at max 10%. I mean, imagine if we as atheists recognize, please let me, let me interrupt on that. My point with that was just to confirm what you said, that it's a small minority of people. That's the only reason I brought that number up. Right. But so I'm just saying like, even if we assume that it's 10%, which I wouldn't, but let's assume that the amount of problematic feminists in the the world are 10%. And again, we're two guys talking about it. So I want to acknowledge that we're talking about two guys. It's unnecessary to acknowledge for the same reason that it doesn't matter that it's 10%. If it's one person, one, and they're right, it doesn'T matter. If it's 10% or 80% and they're wrong, it matters. That's the point I'm talking about.

1:14:20 Guest: I'm saying that this vocal majority is misrepresenting themselves as... But they're a vocal vocal majority, there are vocal minority, very vocal minority. There are vocal minorities of every single conceivable group. And all you do when you give all of your attention with the safe spaces and with feminists to that tiny percentage, to that teeny vocal percentage is ostracize the majority that should be on your side. And you're not, I mean, again, I'm not trying to tone. I disagree. I completely disagree with that. One of the largest avenues that people promoting and atheism have followed is to point out abuses the of homosexuals by Christians.

1:15:06 Guest: And this has caused a large number of Christians, even if it is only a minority of them, which it may be now, who are opposed to gay rights or gay equality. Then even if it's a very vocal minority of Christians, we still criticize them. They are wrong on this matter. And we don't necessarily criticize them and say that they're wrong and try to make some kind of a moral argument about it. We can and people do, but that's not the better way to go. The better way is to ask them how do they defend their position. And when they try to defend their position by appealing to something that comes from revelation or to their particular moral code, we remind them they live in a secular pluralistic society and that their moral code is perfectly fine for them and they have no right whatsoever in such a society to impose it upon others. The difference between talking about Christians and their approaches to homosexuality is that it's codified in their holy book.

1:15:58 Guest: We can look at Leviticus and when Christians go, what are you talking about? Christianity is not homophobic. Book, we can go Leviticus, Corinthians, read the book. It's in your book. God wrote your book, he doesn't like gays. And that's why it's a valid thing. There is no codified testament of feminism. In fact, all the things that you would say are problematic are almost universally rejected by feminists because they're rejected by the vast majority of society. I mean, if you want to talk about the women who yelled at the guy for the EU space station, I use this as my example all the the time for wearing a sexy shirt with a comic book character on it. I'm willing to talk about how silly that is all day. But when we're talking about bigger fish to fry, we have much, much bigger problems than the problematic elements of feminism. And by focusing on the problematic elements of communism, and I talk about this all the time, you give tremendous power to the other side, which is doing truly evil things, right?

1:16:52 Guest: There are bad people, right, there are problematic, silly people within the social justice movement, but they've got nothing against the other side. Again, we're not dealing with cultural appropriation laws. We're dealing with bathroom bills. That's what we have passing in states all across the country, bathroom bills, we don't have women saying the check your privilege law has just passed and approved. It just doesn't, it's just not a comparable problem. And when you make comparisons to that, and when you attack the comparisons to That you do a tremendous amount of injustice. And I keep keep coming back to this and I'm sorry, but you really do ostracize, ostracized huge groups of people. James, I wish I could tell you how many trans people have written to me or how many women have written and said, you know, I can't identify.

1:17:38 Guest: It's really hard to identify as a feminist when I tell people I'm an atheist, or it's really harder to tell people. I'm in atheist because they say, really, after what Dawkins said, or really after what so-and-so said, you call yourself an atheist. And by this, the same reason that we wouldn't let ourselves be represented by the worst of atheism, right? We shouldn't be doing that to other groups, especially groups that are representing those who are disenfranchised at this point in history, women and minorities and trans people. So here's the problem with that, Eli, is you can't, this conversation you and I are having, for instance, it's almost impossible to have conversations of this kind, say on social media, particularly without running into a significant contingent of people who, um, espouse exactly the fringe element, if you want to call it that very loudly and, uh, very hurtfully.

1:18:35 Guest: And so, yes, I, I tend to agree that people should ignore this, but these are people who are very adept at making themselves very difficult to ignore. And they, to steal from your safe space thing, they tend to inject themselves into spaces where We're perfectly reasonable, well-intentioned, good people are having conversations, trying to work through the relevant details for themselves. And we're talking about people who are in the sense of the word that 85 percent of the people agree with, feminists. These are conversations that they then get themselves shut or shouted out of. And so this fringe, this authoritarian fringe is impossible to ignore. That's true of both sides, James. But it doesn't. I tweeted an article about rape culture the other day and someone responded. So what sounds like a drunk girl who gave a guy head?

1:19:23 Guest: I mean, you know, there's... there's only the extremes on either side. I mean look I've been following you on Twitter for a week. There's a large difference between somebody coming in and saying something callous and stupid like that and somebody coming in and you because of your demographics have no basis to have this conversation whatsoever. That is a completely different thing. Your opinion doesn't count for anything.

People are going to spout off and say stupid things no matter what anybody says, no matter in what forum, if it's public. This is almost guaranteed. People aren't going to cut jokes. It's difficult to tell because of the so-called Poe's Law who's serious and who's not if we take everybody even at their word that that they're serious, that these people are are literally people that can be ignored. There's a tremendous difference between that and shouting down a conversation because Yeah. Because what, what I want to hear from you, or at least what I, what I'm not hearing from you and I want to know why is acknowledgement because you don't, you don't let people, um, dismiss math because of teriology. You don't let people dismiss secular, you know, atheism or a secular humanism because of Pol Pot or Joe Rogan or me, right?

We, we have these categories and even though there are huge, or because of 9-11 truthers, right, whatever the case may be, we, we don't accept those unless there are these special categories, which I, which, I believe you've been keeping, which all of a sudden those special minorities, because they're vocal, because their problematic deserve attention and scorn. And what What I really haven't heard from you is acknowledgement that there's a huge group of people that your own acknowledgement are the vast majority,

1:20:08 Thomas: I'll.

1:21:01 Guest: You know, at any percentage of the vast majority who we are ostracizing and making enemies of by mocking them this way. I mean, I got to tell you, James, if I hadn't, if you want to know why, go ahead. Sorry. Sorry. If I didn't get to have this conversation with you and I just read on your Twitter, we need a word that means people who actually hate women. Misogynist is dead. Social justice killed it. Sanity might resurrect it though. I, I, as someone who identifies as a feminist immediately do not get all the benefits of your intelligence, all the profits of your nuance. And, and I don't hear any acknowledgement of the huge group that you're out grouping because of that.

1:21:53 Thomas: Well, there you have it for part one. I want to thank you so much for listening. Very long, so I'm not going to say much. But part two and three will be probably just as long. Action-packed, like I said. Thanks for listening, feel free to leave tons of feedback for our guests. I'll forward the questions to the appropriate people, or actually they'll probably find them on the site or on Facebook. So thanks for listening and I'll see you again for part two.